


haircut + joshler

by lemonjosh



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 08:49:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17864219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonjosh/pseuds/lemonjosh
Summary: be careful about how you breathe. you don't want dust in your lungs.





	haircut + joshler

**Author's Note:**

> this is a short story i wrote for my college classed based on a photo from the great depression but i made it joshler :')

It’s quiet. 

The hay crunches under his feet, mixed in with the dirt, dryer than the grass. The grass is especially dry this time of year. Tyler hasn’t felt a drop of rain in months.

“What are you up to, clouds?” he mumbles, tilting his head up towards the stark blue sky. Not a cloud in sight, only sun, and the sun is oh-so unforgiving. “Come back soon.”

Sweat beads at his temples and on the hook of his nose, even under his armpits. The heat is sweltering, the cut on his leg is throbbing painfully, but he can’t get rid of all the layers. If he gets rid of the layers, dust will find itself in every crevice of his skin, and he can’t risk it getting under the bandage and into his cut. He can’t afford to have an infected cut. 

The Great American Dust Bowl, that’s what everyone has been calling it. A great surge of drought manifested itself in Ohio, no water or rain and every little pond dried out. Even the one behind their house, the one he and Joshua would go to in the winter and ice skate on.

But those are times of the past, and the hay is still crunching under his feet like cracking bones. He limps back towards the house, where he knows Joshua is waiting with his clippers and comb. 

Joshua is sitting on the front porch, leaning against the once white banister, arms slung over the edge. His clippers are sticking out of his pocket. Tyler climbs the steps, aching. “I don’t want any hair on my front porch,” Joshua scowls when Tyler sits down on one of two of their rocking chairs, rickety and covered with a thin film of dust. “Come on, we’ll do it in the shade.”

“There’s shade right here,” Tyler says, wiping at his forehead. Sweat catches on his knuckles. “Besides, there’s already dust all over this thing, what does it matter if we get a little hair on it anyway?”

“Just get down here.” Joshua is already off of the porch, clippers raised in his hand. They’re small, silver, one of the few things left to not be covered in dust. “I’ll cut all your hair off if you don’t hurry up.”

Tyler nearly scurries off of the porch, and Joshua is smiling his wide, bright smile, brighter than the unforgiving sun, clean and fashioned to be contagious. Even in times like this, he never fails to smile. Even when they lost nearly all their life’s savings due to the stock market crash three years ago, he was smiling. “At least we have each other,” is what he told Tyler. “At least we have each other.”

Tyler fixes the strap of his overall as he sits down backwards in the chair, legs spread to hug its edges. “Remember when we’d get our hair done in town?” Tyler asks Joshua, who kneels down in the dirt and remnants of dry hay. He’s in the proposal position, but they both know that will never happen. It isn’t safe for people like Tyler and Josh to be out. 

“Yeah, but that would always cost a fortune.” Joshua begins combing the sides of Tyler’s head, and they would have used a towel, but everything is drying inside. They can’t dry their clothes outside anymore, the dust would cling to it for dear life and then they would just have to wash it again.

Though the shade is cooler than the sun, it is still suffocating, and Joshua has to bury his head against Tyler’s collar bone to get any sort of fresh air. He has to pull the hem of his shirt down to reveal the tan skin that remains untouched by the dust. “Mm, pretty,” he whispers, and presses a quiet kiss to Tyler’s cheek. He snips away at the hair curling around Tyler’s ears. This haircut is long overdue.

Tyler coughs when the wind blows, dust clouds curling at their feet and sinking into the fabric of their boots. The heat is intense, and normally, Joshua would need to wet Tyler’s hair before cutting it, but his sweat is doing a sufficient job of that already. 

Joshua is fast, he knows another dust storm is coming. Tyler might need to redress the cut on his leg. Their windows are already sealed. Maybe when the fresh air comes back they’ll be able to open them back up. Maybe during the winter. 

The wind picks up, more dust churning in the fields. “Come on,” Joshua tells Tyler, patting his hip. “I think we might have some strawberries left over. Let’s go make lunch.”

They leave the chair and hay and Tyler’s hair on the ground in front of the house. The wind makes everything creak, floorboards and walls. The door shuts loudly, the hinges are mucked up with dust. 

The door shuts the dust out, the pain out, the poverty out. It shuts out the harsh reality of the jobless, dirty Ohioans. It shuts out everything they don’t want to face. 

Right now, it shuts out everything but the two of them.

“At least we have each other.”


End file.
